There’s a specific kind of grief we don’t always have language for. It doesn’t come with casseroles or sympathy cards. It doesn’t announce itself loudly. It just quietly shows up one day when you realize your life doesn’t look the way you once imagined it would.
This week’s podcast episode lives right there. In that tender space between gratitude and sadness. The space where you can love your life and still mourn the version that never came to be. The childhood you didn’t get. The timing that never worked out. The relationships, careers, or dreams that felt promised but somehow slipped past you.
What I keep coming back to is this truth, grief doesn’t require a dramatic loss to be valid. You don’t need a headline moment to justify how you feel. Sometimes the grief is simply about becoming aware. Acknowledging that you survived, adapted, pushed through, but at a cost. And that cost deserves to be named.
I talk a lot in the episode about giving yourself permission. Permission to sit with the feeling instead of rushing to fix it. Permission to feel grateful and disappointed at the same time. Permission to stop explaining yourself to people who want neat answers when your experience is anything but neat.
This kind of grief isn’t about dwelling. It’s about honesty. When we allow ourselves to say, “This wasn’t what I thought it would be,” something softens. We stop fighting our own story. We stop gaslighting ourselves into pretending everything was fine. And in that honesty, healing actually begins.
If this episode stirred something in you, I hope you’ll take a moment today to be gentle with yourself. No pressure to reframe, optimize, or find the silver lining. Just breathe. Just notice. Just let yourself be human.
And if you need a soundtrack for that moment, I share “Bring Him Home” from my album Moments in the episode for a reason. Sometimes music holds what words can’t.
Have you ever grieved a version of your life that never happened? For me, I sometimes grieve the version of myself who dreamed of owning an art gallery in NYC. Life unfolded differently, and I’ve been lucky to find meaning and success in other ways. Maybe one day I’ll circle back to that dream. I’m curious, is there a version of yourself you miss? Share if you’d like.
Photos by me, featuring my friend Charles Michael.
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